While reading tweets and doing my normal BizDev/Curation thing, I saw a question on X from The MVP Guy:

“Founders, what’s the hardest part of shipping a SaaS that nobody warns you about?”

Aryan Labde answered: “Distribution bro.”

And, of course, I replied: “Everyone discounts Twitter until it’s too late.”

Because here’s what happens. You spend a weekend vibe coding your SaaS. Maybe you spend months building it. You obsess over features, fix bugs, tweak the interface, connect Stripe, and finally get everything ready.

Then launch day arrives. You built the product first and the distribution later. That’s backwards.

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Here’s what “Too Late” Looks Like

You launch your SaaS and realize you have:

• No audience
• No recognition
• No relationships
• No advocates
• Nobody waiting

But you do have a very nice Product Hunt link that you’re semi-spamming everyone in the DMs. And that’s the problem. If you had relationships with people, the DMs would land. But no one seems to want to put the work in let alone reciprocate that type of support.  

X/Twitter isn’t just somewhere to promote your SaaS after you’ve built it. It’s where you can build distribution while you’re building the SaaS. You can talk with potential users. Listen to their complaints. Test ideas. Find use cases. Learn how people describe the problem you’re trying to solve.

Most importantly, you can build relationships before you need something from those relationships.

Build in Public—But With the Right People

That was part of the original appeal of building in public.

• “I’m building this.”
• “I’m trying that.”
• “Here’s what happened.”

People can watch the process, participate in it, and become invested in what you were creating. It’s like a promoter telling you a stand up comedian is coming your way. But Build in Public has somehow turned into a strange playbook where SaaS founders spend most of their time talking to other SaaS founders.

Peers are nice but users are better.

Before you launch, you want conversations, relationships, recognition, and trust with the people who might actually use what you’re building. Eventually, you’re going to ask those people to give you their credit card information and pay for your software.

Why should they? Nobody cares that you launched simply because you launched. You need the social infrastructure that gives them a reason to care.

Distribution Isn’t Product → Link → Hope

My model has always been some variation of:

Recognition → Trust → Sales

Or:

Affinity → Loyalty → Sales

It is decidedly not:

Product → Link → Hope

People need opportunities to recognize you before they can trust you. This isn’t easier because of the scale of products that AI allows us to build; it’s harder. People don’t even trust the em-dash right now. You want them to trust you with their banking information.

People who like you will interact with your posts. They see you answering questions. They watch what you’re building. They learn how you think. They’re following your Founder account on X. The whole time you’re quietly building the brand account on X. Then when you launch on Product Hunt, they recognize the name as the brand account shares the link and the founder shares that post/Tweet..

ProTip: You should be inviting beta users to test your product way before a Product Hunt launch, by the way, but that’s another blog post. 

When you release a new feature, your audience (customer base) knows why they should pay attention. When they become customers and you continue delivering something useful, that recognition and trust can become loyalty. You cannot skip all those steps and expect launch day to manufacture them for you. It’s not a PR stunt that is solved with extra bodies and free concert tickets.

“Tell the promoter we need more seats.” Kanye on American Boy

You can ship software in a weekend. You cannot ship an audience in a weekend.

Listening Is Part of Distribution

Distribution isn’t only about getting people to see what you’ve built. It also helps you decide what to build. I cannot emphasize this point enough.

This is where I’m often the person in the room asking:

But why?

“We can add this feature.”

Why?

“We can use AI to do this now.”

Why?

“We can build this.”

Okay. Did anybody ask for it?

You already have sources of customer intelligence: support tickets, pre-sales conversations, customer questions, social conversations, reviews, and even conversations about your competitors. Especially in a freemium ecosystem, you should be asking whether people actually need the feature before spending time and money building it.

Just because you can build something doesn’t mean you should.

Your Changelog Isn’t Content Marketing

Once you do ship a feature, there’s another distribution problem: communicating why anyone should care. And right now let me say this: no one cares about your changelog except other devs. I’m not saying that it isn’t important, but if there was ever a use case for Custom Post Types, this is it. 

Blog posts (and don’t be clever with the /blog slug) are for your customers. Changelogs are for developers.

This leaves a translation gap between features that were added and/or modified and why anyone should care. Blog posts and YouTube videos should answer:

• What does this actually do for me?
• Give me the use case.
• Show me the example.
• Tell me what problem this solves.

For example, I get emails from OpusClip all the time telling me about things its software can do. But I know exactly what feature I want.

I want to give OpusClip four links from my YouTube channel and have AI create a highlight reel from those videos. That would be incredibly useful to me as a speaker and podcast guest.

That’s a real use case. And is that new feature? No. A thumbnail creator is, as a lead-gen piece for OpusClip Pro. Stop, Opus. Please.

So when you’re deciding what to build next, listen.

• What are your customers asking for?
• What are they struggling with?
• What are your competitors’ customers complaining about?

Your Competitors’ Customers Are Talking Too

Say you’re building a Dropbox alternative. People are already going on X and asking: “What Dropbox alternative do you use?”

That is customer research sitting in public. I did essentially the same thing recently when I got a new logo and wondered whether people were still using Printful for merch. So I asked. The answer was basically: Printful. Printful. Printful. Printful. Great. Question answered.

People ask each other for recommendations every day. They complain about products. They talk about features they wish existed. They explain why they switched tools. That is why it confounds me when SaaS companies don’t have active brand accounts on X.

You can use that account for distribution, relationship building, customer insight, customer service, and product feedback. People are going to talk about you whether you participate or not. The bigger problem is when they don’t know you exist.

Your SaaS Needs Business Assets

Building software is exciting. It’s creative. I understand why people get caught up in what they can make. But if you want your SaaS to become something more than a hobby, you have to start treating it like a business.

• Businesses have assets.
• Your business has a website.
• Your business has a bank account.
• And your business should have its own branded social accounts.

When you eventually sell your SaaS, you’re not selling the founder’s personal Twitter account.

You’re selling the software, the customers, the brand, the audience, the social capital, and the other business assets you’ve built around the product.

That’s why distribution starts long before launch day.

• Build the relationships.
• Listen to the conversations.
• Create recognition.
• Develop trust.

Give people a reason to care before you hand them your launch link.

Distribution, bro. Start before you need it.

Get SaaS Marketing That Works

If you’ve built a good SaaS product and you’re sitting there thinking, “Why doesn’t anybody know about us?”—that’s probably when you should call me. Especially if you know you should be participating on X and creating content, but you’re busy building the company and you don’t want to become a full-time marketer.

Book a quick sales call or a paid strategy session today!.

Full Transcript

Bridget Willard (00:03):

The hardest part about shipping a SaaS isn’t shipping. This came from a tweet I found on Twitter from The MVP Guy. “Founders, what’s the hardest. What’s the hardest part of shipping a SaaS that nobody warns you about?” What do you think the answer is? Of course, Arian Abel, um, Arian Labod said,” Distribution, bro.” He, he might not have said it like that, but for sure you have to get the Valley Girl in there. Distribution, bro. <laugh>.

Bridget Willard (00:49):

Of course, I, I said “everyone, everyone discounts Twitter until it’s too late.” So if you know me, you already know. That’s what I’ve said. Um, here’s the problem. Here’s the problem. And I’m doing my, uh, analog slideshow to kind of help you guys because it’s hilarious. <laugh>.

Bridget Willard (01:19):

The problem is you spend months building, maybe a weekend, maybe months, and then launch day arrives. You build the product first and the distribution later. So that’s backwards, upside down, wrong.

Bridget Willard (01:39):

Too late looks like this. It looks like you have no audience, no recognition, no relationships, no advocates, and no one waiting, but you do have a very nice launch link on Product Hunt.

Bridget Willard (01:59):

X isn’t just where you promote your SaaS. It’s where you build distribution while you’re building the SaaS. So the Build In Public community started as this. “Hey, I’m building this. I’m vibe-coding that. I, I want you to kind of see what I’m doing and let’s just talk about this.” It’s, you know, hyping up the, hyping up the product launch, just like a concert, just like a promoter. <laugh> You know, like that line in American Boy where Kanye says,” Tell the promoter we need more seats.” <laugh> So, but it’s become like this weird playbook where SaaS founders are only caring about other SaaS founders, which is nice to have peers, but it’s better to have users.

Bridget Willard (03:00):

Before I launch, you’re gonna wanna build conversations, relationships, recognition, and trust. You are building a software that you want users to give you your, their credit card in Stripe to pay for this thing that they’re going to forget to unsubscribe from. Or ,this thing that’s gonna revolutionize their workflow. Or, this product that is the best thing since sliced bread. Whatever it is. Nobody cares that you’ve launched unless you’ve built the infrastructure, the social infrastructure for them to care.

Bridget Willard (03:42):

So this is how, this is the distribution, this is my model. This is what I’ve been saying for, oh, uh, about 20 years now. Recognition, trust, sales, or affinity, leads, sales. Affinity, loyalty, sales. It’s not product link hope, okay? So you want people to have a relationship with you. You want them to like you. If they like you, they have an affinity, which means they will interact with your posts. They will see when you’ve launched your SaaS on Product Hunt. They will see when you’ve released that new feature that hopefully somebody asked for.

Bridget Willard (04:32):

Um, and then they will start. Your customers, your customers will start being loyal to you. They’ve bought it, you’re shipping it, they like it, they’re trusting you, they’re gonna keep buying from you because you are a trusted source of software. You’re a trusted source of thinking through this, right? But if you skip steps, you’re, you’re gonna be, you’re gonna be in trouble.

Bridget Willard (05:02):

You, you can ship software in a weekend, but you can’t ship an audience in a weekend. Or as this says, yeah, you can ship software in a weekend, you can’t ship an audience in a weekend. So you’re gonna wanna be building that trust as you go.

Bridget Willard (05:19):

Distribution, bro. <laugh> Start before you need it. This is the biggest problem I see. And, you know, it’s an easy one to make, honestly. And all of that tongue-in-cheek aside, this is why I’m saying you, you really need to listen to your audience. Do they need that feature? Do they really need that feature? Do you really need to spend time building that feature?

Bridget Willard (05:53):

I’m the person that pushes back and says, “But why?”

Bridget Willard (05:58):

“Oh, you can now do this with our product. “Why?” Did anybody ask for it? Did anybody ask for it? Because you have support tickets, you have pre-sales conversations. That’s where you should be deciding what feature ship, uh, especially if you’re in a WordPress ecosystem, free, core, uh, freemium model. Did they ask for that feature? If they did not ask for that feature, do not waste your time building that feature unless you are building relationships with that specific demographic that the feature is going to help.

Bridget Willard (06:43):

Your next challenge in the distribution bro part of shipping a SaaS is communicating that to your audience. Now, a lot of SaaS companies have feature updates in their blog posts, and that’s great. Your change log is super important, okay? But you also need somebody to translate why those features work. What does it actually do for me, your user? And once you start answering those questions, giving a use case, a case study, um, uh, you know, for instance, an example.

Bridget Willard (07:33):

We, when we build, love our features because we could. We build a cat, uh, parkour wall because you can. That doesn’t mean that it’s — anybody’s gonna buy it. That’s the hard part of shipping SaaS. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should, and also doesn’t mean anybody actually wants it, right?

Bridget Willard (08:07):

I’m getting emails from OpusClip almost every day, “Oh, you could do this. Oh, you could do that. Oh, you could do that.” You know what I really want, OpusClip? And I tweeted this. I want to be able to give you four links from my YouTube channel or wherever, and I want you to make a highlight reel out of those. Build the AI that does that. That’s actually useful to me as a speaker, as a podcast guest. I would love for that to happen. I’ve tried to reach out to people, video editors, they’ve turned the project down because they’re not watching all those videos to do it. Like, this is a great use case for AI, right?

Bridget Willard (08:53):

Do you need, uh. Like, for me, I do my own accounting, not, but I started that way. So when Xero’s saying, “Oh, we have an AI that can automatically do this for you,” I was like, “Oh, really? Can you really?” And I tried, I was like, “Nope. Undo, void. Thank you. I’ll put this in manually.” <laugh> You’re not ready for me yet. You know, maybe it helps some people, that’s fine, but I already know how to do it, you know? Like, recognizing patterns and knowing that, that this expense is gonna go in that category, good job, Xero. That’s why I love you. You keep raising your prices, but I’m still with you, right?

Bridget Willard (09:42):

So think about that. What, what are your customers saying? What are your competi- competitors’ customers saying? So if you are a Dropbox alternative, for example, who’s trying to leave Dropbox? They’re gonna put on Twitter, “what Dropbox alternative do you use?” What are we using? Even yesterday, I was like, “Are we still using Printful for merch? ‘Cause I just got a new logo. I mean, is that the new and upcoming thing? Is there something I missed?” And it was like, “No, Printfull, Printfull, Printful, Printful, Printful.” Okay, great. So I already knew about Printful, because I’ve used it before. But I didn’t know, like, you know, that’s another way people will ask.

Bridget Willard (10:30):

And this is why it really confounds me that there aren’t brand accounts, that there aren’t more brand accounts on X for this exact distribution layer, for the, for building the relationships, for gaining customer insight, heck, for doing customer service. People are gonna talk about you no matter what. People are gonna talk about you no matter what. But if they don’t know you exist, <laugh> this is gonna be a problem, right?

Bridget Willard (11:06):

And I think that too many people get excited that they could do something, that they can build this thing. And I’m not gonna lie, it is exciting, it’s creative, it’s wonderful, but when you want it to become something more than a hobby, then you have to think about it like a business, and a business has assets. Your business has a website. Your business has a bank account. Your business has a branded Twitter account.

Bridget Willard (11:38):

When you sell your SaaS product, you’re not gonna sell your founder’s Twitter account, right? You’re, you’re not gonna sell your founder’s website. You’re gonna sell the, the social capital that you’ve built, your users, your software, and all of the business assets. So that’s a little bit about distribution today. Thank you for watching. If you’ve gone this far, you need help, hey, I’m only a meeting booking away, and we’ll see you later.

Bridget Willard (12:13):

I’m Bridget Willard and this is BridgetWillard.com. Bye.